This study applies Reese and Shoemaker's hierarchy-of-influences approach and takes a novel perspective of international news flow to comparatively study American and Chinese media's coverage of Beijing's air pollution. Although a hot-debated issue, media coverage of Beijing's air pollution has rarely been analyzed thoroughly. This study finds that the two countries' newspaper coverage of the topic has both differences and similarities concerning topic priorities, source usage, and overall frames. The U.S. media covered the issue earlier. That coverage had more political topics, more negative frames, and more U.S. sources, as well as a noticeable number of Chinese NGO sources. By comparison, Chinese media covered the issue with more self-legitimizing topics in which strategies of pollution-mitigation were emphasized; it also framed the issue with mild self-criticism, projecting the issue with more of an "international public relations" strategy. Using content analysis, this study samples China Daily and the New York Times, examining news articles between 2008 and 2013 and dividing them into three time periods: pre-Olympic period, post-Olympic period, and 2013 incident period. This study explores a broader and more sophisticated approach and prospective to study American and Chinese media.
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